Sunday, July 27, 2014

Texas Day 4: Resaca de la Palma; Sabal Palm Sanctuary

We had
arranged by email to meet
Sherry Wilson, volunteer at Resaca de la Palma, at 8am and she very kindly took
us out and about for 4 hours and taught us a lot about all aspects of wildlife
on the reserve.

An early
excitement was the electric vehicle screeching to a halt because a Texas Coral
Snake was slithering across the road. Top venomous snake – excellent.

Further on we
spotted a small grey bird with an orange/red bill, which we decided must be a
flea-market escapee as we know of no such naturally occurring bird. Just as we
were discussing this, Leo spotted a White Tailed Kite (formerly Black
Shouldered) and White Tailed Hawk having a ‘domestic’. This encounter enabled
us to realize that the bird at Santa Ana had in fact been a Swainson’s Hawk.

In sweltering
conditions we managed a fleeting glimpse of a Yellowthroat (song reminiscent of
our whitethroat?) and of a young White-Eyed Vireo (after a lot of looking at
musical bushes).

The female Blue
Grosbeak is not very colourful, but nice to see anyhow.

Back near the
visitor centre, Sherry was trying to show us a Common Paraque, but grass
clipping had disturbed it from its usual hiding place. However, looking round
here enabled us to spot 3 Black and White Warblers, our second First-of-Season
sightings of them!

Interesting
learning

-Mockingbirds
mimic the sounds of other birds (so are a clue as to what else lives in the
area) as well as other sounds. But they only mimic each sound 4 times, which
enables one to distinguish from the original bird

Sherry also gave us some good advice about
other places to visit.

Firstly, we looked into Texas University
for a reported Black Phoebe on the bridge. No sign unfortunately, though we
picked up double crested (thanks Sherry!) Neotropic Cormorant.

Thence on to Sabal Palm Sanctuary, a
delightful place which is technically in Mexico as it is through a gap in the
giant border fence which runs along the levee here. The visitor centre is in a
wonderful old plantation home, and the very helpful guy there told us about how
they regularly hear gunshots from the Mexican direction. The Sanctuary had some nice birds, and at one
turning on the path we were lucky enough to encounter a Texan Tortoise! Only
the third one I have seen in the wild – a Greek Island and Sardinia being the
other places.

After a long day, we decided to ‘shoot down
the highway like a rocket to the ocean’. The Boca Chica highway to be precise,
famous for having raptors on its poles. Sure enough there were raptors. My
confidence was ebbing as we had no idea how long we had to go along this
featurless road through scrub, when suddenly the road ran out and we arrived
straight onto the sand of Boca Chica beach – miles in both directions with a
few cars parked at intervals along the sand.
So we had another relaxing dip.